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Crisis of the Late Middle Ages
The era of the Black Death / Hundred Years’ War lasted from about 1337 AD until 1455 AD. It began on the eve of the Hundred Years’ War between the two leading European powers of the day; France and England. It then ended with the innovation that helped spark the Modern Age, the movable type printing press. The Late Middle Ages was both a foundation period for modern Europe, and an era of crisis, famine, war, and plague including the Black Death, one of the most devastating pandemics in human history. The Hundred Years’ War saw England and France fight out 116-year-long stalemate. Nevertheless, despite the heavy sacrifice, the war strengthened the sense of national identity in both countries, and was a time of rapid military developments. It also first established the European balance of power, which would see the continent engaging in a permanent armaments race and competitive colonial acquisitions, that would eventually see Western civilisation boast an unchallenged dominance of the world in the 19th century. Meanwhile, the fall of Constantinople marks the end of the some two-thousand years of Roman civilisation, and the beginning of the Muslim Ottoman Empire as a power in Europe. History Hundred Years' War (1337–1360) Since the Norman conquest of England in 1066, lands on both sides of the English Channel were under the control of the kings of England. The result was a struggle spanning centuries in which the royal family crowned in Westminster sought to retain their territory, and royal family crowned in Reims strove more successfully to assert their authority over the whole geographical region of France; by the time of Louis IX of France the English kings retained only the Duchy of Aquitaine on the southwest coast. The struggle was not just one of warfare, but a complex game of dynastic marriages. The princes of the two houses married within the same limited circle, thus Western Europe became an interconnected web of cousins. In this web of conflicting claims, warfare between French and English was endemic during these centuries, but it flares into the longest and bitterest conflict in the 14th century; the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453). Between 1316 and 1328 three kings of France died with no male heir. When the last, Charles IV (1322-1328) died, for the first time since the ascension of Hugh Capet, almost three-hundred-and-fifty years before, there was a succession crisis in France. The closest male relative was the son of Charles' sister Isabella, King Edward III of England (1327-77). However the choice of successor was left to an assembly of French nobles, who awards the crown to Charles’ cousin Philip VI (1328-1350 AD). The English king seemed at first to reluctantly accept the decision. Yet tensions between the two kings gradually grew: the French king renewed the Auld Alliance with Scotland, and asserted greater control over Flanders which was crucial to England's wool trade. The animosity escalated in 1337, when a disgraced French noble fled to England and Edward III refused to extradite him. Philip VI accused him of breaching his obligations as vassal and declared that he was formally confiscating Aquitaine. This time the English response was dramatic; Edward III renewed his claim to French throne, undoubtedly a declaration of war. The early fighting in the first phase of the war took place at sea. With the help of alliances with the disgruntled nobles in Flanders, the English navy delivered a crushing defeat to the French at the Battle of Sluys (1340). This little known battle gave them control over the English Channel, and crucially meant the war would take place on French soil. In 1346, Edward mounted his first major campaign across the Channel with an army of 15,000 men, ravaging and pillaging across Normandy. As he was making his way back towards the coast, a larger French army caught up with him. Yet the Battle of Crécy (August 1346) was a complete disaster for the French. This battle marks the beginning of the longbow as the dominant weapon on battlefield rather than heavy cavalry, wielded by paid soldiers rather than feudal knights. The longbow probably developed in Wales during the 12th century, and fired heavier arrows at a far faster rate than the traditional crossbow. It had first been used to devastating effect against the Scots at the Battle of Falkirk (1298). Crucially at Crécy, it also allowed bow-strings to be changed quickly in the rain. Yet the longbow did not make the English invincible; archers were always very vulnerable if they could be outflanked. Meanwhile, the next year Edward captured the coastal port-city of Calais after famously stiff resistance from the citizens. Calais remained in English hands long after the Hundred Year' War until 1558, providing a foothold for English raids in France. A truce was agreed after the fall of Calais, and held for several years, largely because the whole of Europe was distracted by a far more serious threat, the Black Death. Hostilities resumed in 1355 with Edward the Black Prince, the son of Edward III, landing in Aquitaine. With easier maneuverability on home soil, a larger French army commanded by the French king himself, John II (1350-64), again intercepted the English near the town of Poitiers. Edward chose his position carefully, positioned behind hawthorn hedges with a river on one side and dense forest on the other. The Battle of Poitiers (September 1356) was hard fought three-day affair and King John fought with great personal courage, but in the end was a catastrophic defeat for the French that left the French king a prisoner of the English. After much negotiation, first phase of the war ended under favourable terms for the English in the Treaty of Brétigny (1360), which exchanged the French king, for a huge ransom of three million gold crowns and a vastly expanded Aquitaine. Black Death (1346–1353) The 14th century saw the growth and prosperity that Europe had enjoyed during the previous three centuries come to a dramatic halt. The continent had already been struck by a Europe-wide crop failure and famine from 1315-1317. Then in 1346, an unusually virulent strain of Bubonic Plague inflicted eastern Asia and China; the Black Death. During the 1330s, the lethal infection devastated China, probably contributing to the fall of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty from which the native Ming Dynasty emerged. It then made its way westwards along the Silk Road carried by fleas, particularly those living on rats; at the time the Silk Road was easier to travel than ever before thanks to the Mongols. By 1347, it had reached the Turkish ports of the Crimea, where Genoese and Venetian merchants brought it home to Europe. During early 1348, the disease spread through most of Continental Europe, with towns and cities hardest hit. It reached England in late 1348, Norway the following year, and finally Sweden in 1350 the last kingdom to feel the effects. As described by Florentine chronicler Matteo Villani, "it was a plague that touched people of every condition, age and sex. They began to spit blood and then they died; some immediately some in two or three days, and some in a longer time. Most had swellings in the groin, and many had them in the left and right armpits and in other places; one could almost always find an unusual swelling somewhere on the victim's body." The results everywhere were devastating. As much as a third of Europe's population died and did not recover to pre-plague levels until the 17th century. Economies collapsed, and fear and superstition become prevalent. As Europe's citizens succumbed in vast numbers to the plague, rumours spread that the cause lay in wells that had been deliberately poisoned by Jews. The first massacre of Jews occurred in France in April 1348. By 1351, over two-hundred Jewish communities had suffered, with one of the worst massacres in Strasbourg where some 2,000 Jews were publicly burnt to death. Jews fleeing from the horror would make their way mainly to Poland, and subsequently into Russia. The plague repeatedly returned to haunt Europe and the Mediterranean throughout the 14th to 17th centuries, though never as virulently as this first outbreak. The Black Death was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, along with the Antonine Plague that struck the Roman Empire around 165 AD, the Justinian Plague that struck the Byzantine Empire around 541 AD, the plagues that killed perhaps 90% of the population of the Americas after the arrival of Christopher Columbus, and the HIV/AIDS epidemic from the 1980s. It had a huge effect on Medieval Europe. Despite the dramatic fall in the population, the production and commerce that Europe had enjoyed since the 13th century was largely maintained. Labour shortages led to higher wages for labourers and artisans, further loosening the bonds of the Feudal System. The ineffectiveness of priests in dealing with the crisis may have led to the weakened dominance of the Catholic Church and to a greater receptiveness to the ideas of the Protestant Reformation. It also led to an increase in building out of brick with slate roofs, instead of wood with thatched roofs where rats like to live. Hundred Years' War (1369–89) The ransom for King John II was never paid by the French, and with the ascension of Charles V (1364-1380 AD) to the throne came a revival of French fortunes. When Edward the Black Prince in Aquitaine involved himself at great expense in a civil war in Castilian, the nobles in Aquitaine appealed to the French king against his demands for higher tax. In 1369, English ownership of Aquitaine was again revoked. Where his grandfather and father had tended to plunge into battle, Charles preferred patient attrition and diplomacy. At the centre of his statecraft was a consistent emphasis on the divine nature of kingship; he was anointed at his coronation with holy oil supposedly from the baptism of Clovis in 496 AD. After the French navel victory at the Battle of La Rochelle (1372 AD), the English command of the sea came to an end. As the prestige of Charles V grew, the English position continued to weaken. Both Edward III and Edward the Black Prince died in 1376-77 bringing to the English throne a ten-year-old child, Richard II (1377-99). By the time the Treaty of Bruges (1389 AD) was signed, the English had been driven out of all their territory in France apart from small territories around Calais, Brest, and Bordeaux. Build-up to the Final Phase (1377-1415) In England, the young king Richard II proved himself not a wise one. His weak but autocratic rule made him enemies among the peasants and the nobility. With the scarcity of labour since the Black Death, the government had taken various draconian steps to control wage rises for peasants. However, a poll tax introduced by Richard II in 1380 was the finally indignity. Civil disorder flared up in many parts of the country during the summer of 1381; the Peasants Revolt. The most dangerous was in Kent under Wat Tyler, who marched on London, seized the Tower of London, and murders two members of the Privy Council held responsible for the poll tax. The young king showed considerable personal courage in personally meeting with Tyler at Smithfield, but during the peace talks a scuffle broke out, and Tyler was killed. Richard then mustered 4,000 soldiers to restore order in the country and the revolt soon petered-out; once the danger was over some 1,500 of rebel leaders were hunted down and executed. Nevertheless, when the English king later needed popular support, he would find he had none. In 1398, Richard found a pretext to banish his troublesome cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, the heir of the Duke of Lancaster. Bolingbroke departed peacefully for France, but a year later when the Duke of Lancaster died, the king confiscated his vast lands and inheritance. After this act of provocation, Bolingbroke returned to England while Richard was campaigning in Ireland, and easily raised sufficient support to meet Richard in battle. In the end, Richard surrendered without a battle, and Bolingbroke was crowned king of England as Henry IV Lancaster (1399-1413); Richard was imprisoned and died a year later probably of starvation. While his acclaim in the country was broad at first, Henry IV was undeniably a usurper, and much of his reign was taken up with putting down rebellions, especially the last great uprising of Welsh nationalism under Owain Glyn Dwr. Despite of an early defeat at Welshpool in 1400, Glyn Dwr’s uprising grew in strength. A breakthrough for the rebels came in 1402 when Edmund Mortimer, an Anglo-Norman noble from the Welsh borders, was the captured and persuaded to change sides. In 1404, Glyn Dwr captured the important English strongholds of Aberystwyth and Harlech, and began to rule as Prince of Wales. However, from this high water mark the tide turned against the rebels, largely thanks to the campaigns of the English prince, the future Henry V. Henry took back Aberystwyth and Harlech in 1408, and two years later Glyn Dwr was reduced to the status of an outlaw; he died in obscurity while in hiding. In 1378, the Anglo-French conflict also gained a religious aspect during the Great Papal Schism (1378-1417 AD). In 1377, Pope Gregory XI returned the papal court to Rome, after nearly seventy years of residency in Avignon, France. However, Gregory’s Italian successor proved too intransigent for the French cardinals, who elected a second Pope in Avignon. The two rival Popes inevitably rooted itself into every political conflict in Europe: England supported the Pope in Rome, while France obviously aligned with Avignon; Portugal aligned against Castile in her struggle to retain independence; and Scotland aligned against England. In wasn’t until 1417, after various attempts to end the schism, that an ecumenical council finally deposed both Popes and all the European cardinals recognised Pope Martin V (1417-1431 AD) in Rome. Meanwhile in France, the long reign of Charles VI (1380-1422) would bring disaster to France. He ascended to the throne at just eleven years-of-age, and was also prone to bouts of insanity in later life. The first half of his reign was dominated by his uncle, Philip of Burgundy, who ruled largely in his own interest. The French army campaigned against the rebellious territory of Flanders, which was then incorporated it into Phillip’s own duchy. When Philip died in 1404, a bitter rivalry within the regency descended into civil war between two branches of the royal family; the Armagnacs and the Burgundians. It would paralyse France for three decades, and usher in the devastating final phase of the Hundred Years' War. Hundred Years' War (1415–53) In 1415, the new king on the English throne, Henry V (1413-22), availed himself of the disarray in France and brought a fleet across the English Channel. He seized the French stronghold of Harfleur in the Seine estuary after a prolonged siege. After this unexpected delay, Henry moved north towards Calais to return to England, but was outmanoeuvred by a French army that outnumber him by perhaps three to one. Yet at the Battle of Agincourt '''(October 1415),' Henry took up position in a valley of recently ploughed land hemmed in by dense woodland, which worked against the French cavalry and for the English bowmen. The French defeat was catastrophic, costing the lives of some 40% of the French nobility. In the aftermath, Henry retook much of Normandy, including Caen in 1417 and Rouen in 1419, turning Normandy English once again. In 1420, Henry signed the Treaty of Troyes allying England with the Burgundian faction in the French civil war who controlled northern France. The terms were extraordinarily advantageous to the English cause, with Henry V acknowledged heir of the French king. However, Henry died of dysentery while on campaign at the age of thirty-five, and was succeeded by his infant son Henry VI (1422-1461 AD), King of England as well as disputed King of France. Inevitably passionate French nationalism would unite against the prospect of an English king, but unusually it was led by a young peasant girl, '''Joan of Arc'. In the winter of 1429, Joan, who had for some years been hearing voices, was given very specific instructions on how to turn the tide of the war. She was to raise the English siege of Orléans, so that the son of Charles VI could be consecration with holy oils as King of France at Reims. Joan convinced the Armagnac faction of southern France to let her lead the French forces to Orléans, which had been besieged by the English for six months. Inspired by Joan, armed like a man, fighting at least as bravely as a man, the English were forced into full retreat. She then led the dauphin to Reims, with every town on-route freely opening their gates. At Reims, Charles VII (1422-29) was crowned king with for the first time the undivided allegiance of the French people. For the next ten months, Joan continued to campaign against the English and the Burgundians, usually with considerable success, for her reputation had turned the Anglo-French conflict into a holy war. However in May 1430, she fell from her horse during a skirmish and was captured. The English want her to expose her as a heretic, but she obstinately refused to recant. On 30 May 1431 Joan of Arc was burnt at the stake, yet even her death could not stem the new surge of French successes. In 1435, the Duke of Burgundy acknowledged the trend and made peace with Charles VII, essentially ending the French civil war. Nevertheless, Normandy and Aquitaine were still in English hands. The war descended into a long uneasy truce, giving Charles time to centralise the French state and reform the antiquated French approach to warfare into a more modern professional army equipped with artillery; gunpowder had been introduced to Europe by the Muslims who first used cannons in Spain in 1248 AD. The first engagement in which cannons played a decisive role was at the Battle of Formigny (1450) in Normandy. For much of the battle the English bowmen achieved their now customary success, but with two small cannons the French won the day. After reclaiming Normandy, the same pattern was repeated three years later at the Battle of Castillon in Aquitaine, the last battle of the Hundred Years War. The war was formally ended with the Treaty of Picquigny (1475), which left England with no possessions in France except for Calais. For all the great sacrifice, the war strengthened the sense of national identity in both countries; by the end of his reign, Charles VII directly controls nearly all of France, with only Burgundy, Flanders and Brittany enjoying some nominal autonomy. It also introduced the dominant theme of Europe for the next five-hundred years; the balance of power between the dominant powers of the continent. England and France would remain permanently within this group, but others would join and sometime decline and leave. This balance would see the great powers of Europe engaging in a permanent armaments race, economic and intellectual rivalry, and competitive colonial acquisitions, that would eventually see Western civilisation boast an unchallenged dominance of the world in the 19th century. Fall of Constantinople (1453) Meanwhile despite the recovery of Constantinople in 1261, the Byzantine Empire was impoverished and continued to lose ground both in Europe to the Slavs, and in Anatolia to a new power, the Muslim Ottoman Turks. Throughout the 13th century, Anatolia had been in turmoil, with Turkish tribes fighting among themselves. One petty chieftain by the name of Osman (1299-1323 AD) established a dynasty that slowly seized control of the region; the Byzantine stronghold of Bursa fell in 1326, Nicaea in 1331, and Nicomedia in 1337 just across the Hellespont from Constantinople. Ironically, it was the Byzantines themselves that allowed the Ottomans a toe-hold in Europe, ceding the town of Gallipoli to them in 1354 AD during a squabble for the throne. Within a few decades, the Byzantines were hemmed-in to the hinterland of Constantinople, surrounded on all sides by the Ottomans. A stranglehold was being applied to the Byzantine capital, but the Turks first looked for expansion in an easier direction. By 1389, Bulgarian Thrace and Macedonia, as well as Serbia were incorporated into the Ottoman Empire. Then in 1394, the Ottoman Turks began a long expected blockade of Constantinople, but the Byzantines were given a sudden reprieve while the Turks dealt with clashes on their eastern border with the Muslim Timurid Empire that emerged in Persia and Central Asia from the decline of the Mongols. However, Constantinople’s situation turned desperate, when Mehmed II (1451-1481 AD) ascended to the sultanate of the Ottoman Empire. He started his reign as he meant to go on, by murdering the infant legitimate heir; as he later remarked “whichever of my sons inherits the sultan’s throne, it behove him to kill his brother in the interest of the world order.” Mehmed made no effort to hide his intentions of conquering Constantinople. Emperor Constantine XI (1449-1453 AD) desperately appealed to Western Europe for a Crusade, but the response was always to convert to Catholic Christianity first; the West was still asleep to the danger of the Ottomans. Nevertheless, at least under Constantine XI the empire would go down fighting. In April 1453 AD, the Ottomans commenced the siege of Constantinople with an army of 150,000 troops, a navy of 130 ships, and numerous cannons, including one more than twice as large as any yet built. Despite having only 7,000 soldiers, Constantine XI refused to surrender. The Theodosian Walls were reduced to rubble in places, but every night the defenders would repair the rubble into defences. Frustrated with his lack of progress, Mehmed dragged 70 ships on wheeled carriages overland past the great chain and into the imperial harbour. With Constantine’s troops now stretched over an even longer portion of the walls, Constantine XI remarkably held out for another month. On 29 Tuesday May 1453 AD, Constantinople fell, with the emperor himself dying valiantly in the fighting. Mehmed gave his troops free rein in the conquered city for three days. Only Hagia Sophia was ordered to be spared; the great church, for many centuries the most magnificent in Christendom, now began its new life as a mosque. And so, Constantinople became a great imperial centre again; the new capital of the Ottoman Empire with a new name, Istanbul. The population of the city had been much reduced after decades of fear and uncertainty, so Mehmed repopulated it from Greece, which became part of his empire in 1460. He also launched into a busy building programme, founding several mosques and beginning the Topkapi Palace in 1462. The Ottomans’ control of the East would interrupt Europe’s access to the Silk Road and the orient. Just 35 years after the fall of Constantinople, the Portuguese sailor Bartolomeu Dias rounded the southern tip of Africa seeking a sea-route to India. The cultural legacy of the Byzantine Empire has often been overlooked by Western European historians. Constantinople had been by far the largest city in Europe until the 13th century, and as far away as Scandinavia it was simply known as The City. For 800 years, the stoutness of its walls blocked Europe from the seemingly irresistible Muslim tide, something no other European state could have withstood. For all its often poisonous imperial court, no medieval state came close to as strong and cohesive a political system, nor as complex a fiscal and bureaucratic structure, except maybe the Muslim world. During the Middle Ages, the Byzantines also provided a beacon of civilisation for barbarous Europe to aspire to, then when with the fall its scholars fled to the West, bringing with them the classic knowledge of Greek and Roman civilisation; 40,000 of the 55,000 surviving texts were copied in Constantinople. Meanwhile, Eastern Orthodox Christianity would live-on in most of the Slav countries and Russia, as well as Greece under the multicultural and tolerant Muslims; far more tolerant than Catholic Europe was to the Jews. Finally, Justinian gave Roman Law to Europe which formed an important basis for European law all the way down to Napoléon’s legal code of 1804 AD. Rise of the House of Habsburg (1350-1490) Early Renaissance (1350-1490) From the 14th century, European intellectual life was profoundly affected by the cultural movement of the Renaissance. Beginning in Italy, and spreading to the rest of Europe by the 16th century, its influence was felt in literature, philosophy, art, music, politics, science, religion, and other aspects of intellectual inquiry. The concept of the Renaissance has been argued over by some modern historians, almost as if the Middle Ages were some sort of depressed class needing historical rehabilitation. Although the 12th and 13th centuries in particular were unmistakably civilised, Europe in the Middle Ages was nonetheless culturally backward, superstitious, and artistically primitive when compared to the Muslim and Chinese civilisations of the time. If the Renaissance had a beginning, it was in the conscious revival of the study of classical literature from about 1350, and the patronage of affluent merchant banking families like the Medici in Florence. Scholars such as Boccaccio and Bracciolini sought out in Europe's monastic libraries the Latin literary, historical, and oratorical texts of Antiquity, while the Fall of Constantinople generated a wave of émigré Greeks bringing long forgotten manuscripts in ancient Greek. They became known as humanists, implying an admiration for the finest achievements of the human race. While the humanists visited Rome and other ancient cities to copy texts and inscriptions, three Florentine friends - Brunelleschi an architect, Donatello a sculptor and Masaccio a painter – sketched the details of the surviving buildings of classical antiquity. They were recognized in their own time as being the founders of a new direction in art; Renaissance Art. Brunelleschi was the first to evolve a scientific theory of perspective, which he used to startling effect in the Pazzi Chapel (1430) and Florence Cathedral (1436). Donatello, between 1411 and 1417, carved two free-standing figures of St Mark and St George for a merchant guildhall of Orsanmichele in a more purely classical style than anything attempted by predecessors. Masaccio’s frescoes in the chapel in Santa Maria del Carmine (1428) had a new freedom in the expression of emotion and a sense of depth that were among the great turning points of the Renaissance. The masters of classic Greece and Rome were finally being challenged. The ideas of the Renaissance would quickly spread throughout Italy. From about 1470 Botticelli was established as one of the leading painters of Florence, and also worked in Pisa and Rome. His characteristic style can be seen in two of the best loved paintings of the Renaissance: In Primavera (1478) and The Birth of Venus (1482). The ideas of the Italian Renaissance then slowly cross the Alps to the rest of Europe. The Low Countries were early adherents, thanks to the links of trade and finance between cities in Italy and the Netherlands, where a particularly vibrant artistic culture developed; the Northern Renaissance. During the 1430s, Jan van Eyck painted a succession of masterpieces with a greater emphasis on naturalism and realism, starting with the altarpiece in the cathedral of Ghent. These extraordinary decades in the Low Countries, introduced other outstanding master like Robert Campin (b. 1375), Rogier van der Weyden (b. 1400), and Hugo van der Goes (b. 1430). In France, Jean Fouquet spent four years in Italy, before returning to Tours where he painted a number of striking works like the Book of Hours, detailed miniature illustrations of scenes from the Bible and the lives of the saints. The cultural movement of the visual arts would reach its apex in the High Renaissance (1490-1529). The term Renaissance Man has come to mean someone with exceptional skills in a wide range of fields. There were two outstanding candidates for the title: Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. Printing Press (1455) Since the 11th century, the Chinese had been experimenting with the movable type printing press, but the Chinese script posed significant challenges, and it wasn’t until the early 13th century that the Koreans finally achieved it; the oldest surviving printed book dates from 1377. Nearly 200 years later, in the tiny German statelet of Mainz, few people realised the enormous contribution to the future that would come from Johannes Gutenberg's movable type printing press, when he produced the first Gutenberg Latin Bible in 1455 AD. The printing process involves complex problems at every stage, and the brilliance of the first known product from Gutenberg's press suggests that earlier efforts must have been lost. The new technology spread rapidly: there were printing presses in the Papal State by 1464; Venice and Paris by 1470; Spain and Flanders by 1474; London in 1476; in Sweden by 1483; and as far away as Spanish Mexico City by 1539 AD. Category:Historical Periods